"The Moors have a proverb, and it is a very true one, that safety and
security can only be found in the districts where there is no
government--that is to say, where the government is a _tribal_ one."
+Degradation through "Civilisation"+
From _The Spiritualism of the Zulu_. By C. H. Bull, of Durban.
"Thirty-two years ago, I lived for some time in a district in Natal,
then thickly populated with natives, still conforming to the primitive
customs of their race, yet honest, manly and intelligent people, with
very definite ideas in regard to moral questions. After an absence of
thirty years, just prior to my sailing for England, I again visited the
district and was amazed to observe the change which had taken place in
the people; their habits, characters and physique. Sordid poverty,
dressed in mean rags or tawdry finery, suggestive of service to vice,
had displaced the old dignity, born of conscious physical strength and
symmetry of form, which once, though attired only in the trappings that
simple art could devise from the rough products of nature, was
characteristic; whilst drunkenness, dishonesty and immorality sought
shelter under the meagre cloaks of the religion dispensed by the
different sections of belief, established in the little iron, or wattle
and daub churches, which everywhere disfigured the country side. The
change was complete and deplorable, nor were the natives unconscious of
their degradation, or without regret for the passing of the old days."
+Slavery+
From Waitz's _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, vol. ii, p. 281.
(Leipzig, 1860.)
"One finds that the fate of Slaves among the ruder peoples is much
happier than among the civilised; indeed it seems to grow worse and
worse in proportion to the civilisation of the ruling folk. Strange and
incredible as at first sight this seems, the following facts establish
it beyond doubt. And indeed it is not difficult to explain. The chief
reason is that with the increase of _merely material culture_, Time and
Labour-force are more and more prized, and consequently always more
violently and unscrupulously exploited, while on the contrary among
primitive people in general a lesser value is placed on these things."
+The Fraud of Western Civilisation+
Extract from "A Letter to a Chinese Gentleman," by Leo Tolstoy.
(Published in _Saturday Review_, December 1, 1906.)
"Amongst all these Western nations there unceasingly proceeds a strife
between the destitute exasperated working people and the government and
wealthy, a strife which is restrained only by coercion on the part of
deceived men who constitute the army; a similar strife is continually
waging between the different states demanding endlessly increasing
armaments, a strife which is any moment ready to plunge into the
greatest catastrophes. But however dreadful this state of things may be,
it does not constitute the essence of the calamity of the Western
nations. Their chief and fundamental calamity is that the whole life of
these nations who are unable to furnish themselves with food is entirely
based on the necessity of procuring means of sustenance by violence and
cunning from other nations, who like China, India, Russia and others
still preserve a rational agricultural life.
"Constitutions, protective tariffs, standing armies, all this together
has rendered the Western nations what they are--people who have
abandoned agriculture and become unused to it, occupied in towns and
factories in the production of articles for the most part unnecessary,
people who with their armies are adapted only to every kind of violence
and robbery. However brilliant their position may appear at first sight
it is a desperate one, and they must inevitably perish if they do not
change the whole structure of their life founded as it now is on deceit
and the plunder and pillage of the agricultural nations."